Forrest Gerard: A Story Worth Retelling

When opportunity came knocking, Forrest Gerard (1925-2013) was ready to help craft the laws that redefined federal policy toward American Indians. Mark Trahant wants future generations to remember the story.

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What is “The Canon of Indian Country?”

Those stories that are recited in schools, the ones most young people know by heart, tales of valor, excellence and an optimistic future.

But there is no canon. So important stories drift about in individual memory, forgotten far too easily, instead of being told again and again.

The story of Forrest Joseph Gerard is one that ought to be required in any Indian Country canon. He died on December 28, 2013, in Albuquerque.

Forrest Gerard was born on Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation on January 15, 1925, on a ranch near the Middle Fork of the Milk River. He told me that his “childhood I had there would have been the envy of any young boy in the United States. We had a horse of our own. We could walk maybe 15 or 20 yards [and] have some of the best trout fishing in northern Montana. We had loving parents. We had love, support and discipline. And this was my universe; this was a world I knew.”

That world he knew changed many times in his early life. During the Great Depression his family moved into the “city” of Browning so his father could take a job. After his high school graduation, Gerard was eager to join the military and enter World War II. He was only 19 on his first bombing mission on a B-24 with the 15th Air Force. “We were forced to face life and death, bravery and fear at a relatively young age. That instilled a little bit of maturity into us that we might not under normal circumstances,” Gerard recalled. The military also gave access to the G.I. Bill of Rights and a college education for Gerard, the first in his family to have that opportunity.

After college, Gerard worked at jobs that built his personal portfolio at agencies in Montana and Wyoming until moving to Washington, D.C., in 1957 to work for the newly created Indian Health Service. Over the next decade or so Gerard took a variety of posts, including a coveted Congressional Fellowship, a post at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Health and Human Services.

But our story picks up in 1971 when Gerard was hired by Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Washington), chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs, as a professional staff member for Indian affairs. Jackson had long been an advocate for termination, the policy of ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government. Jackson and his staff assistant, James Gamble, had carried out that policy with a sense of mission. By hiring Gerard, Jackson was reversing course.

To send a signal to Indian Country, Jackson issued a statement calling for a Senate resolution reversing House Concurrent Resolution 108 — the termination proclamation — and the message was delivered to Yakama Chairman Robert Jim while he was on the Hill. “[Jim] rushed out of the building, jumped in a cab, went over to where the [National Tribal Chairmen’s Association] was meeting, burst into the room, interrupted whoever was speaking and told them Jackson was introducing legislation to reverse House Con. 108,” Gerard said. “In that one fell swoop, we did more to reverse Jackson’s image in Indian Country.”

The next step was more substantial: turning into legislation Richard Nixon’s July 1970 message to the Congress on Indian Affairs, a speech that affirmed the Administration’s commitment to tribal self-determination. That next step was the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, eventually signed into law on April 3, 1974.

But the legislative train was running. The self-determination act was followed by the Menominee Restoration Act, the Indian Finance Act and, what Gerard considered his legislative capstone, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.

It’s hard, even today, to imagine a string of legislative victories such as what happened during the partnership of Gerard and Jackson. The record speaks for itself.

After leaving the Senate, Gerard worked on Capitol Hill representing tribes until President Jimmy Carter nominated him as the first Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the Interior Department. In that post, he set the standard for the job itself, making certain that policy included voices from Indian Country.

Gerard wrapped up his career in the private sector, again representing tribes in Washington.

So why should Forrest Gerard’s story be in The Canon? Simply this: He traveled from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and built a professional career. He was prepared to take advantage of that moment when he was offered a job with enormous potential, shepherding legislation that not only ended termination as a policy, but promoted tribal self-determination as an alternative. Sure, there had been other American Indians working on Capitol Hill, probably just two or three before Gerard, but none was given the authority to act in the name of a full committee chairman and craft law. This was new — and huge.

After he left the committee, Senator Jackson asked Gerard if he thought the self-determination process would happen all at once, if tribes would take over programs and manage programs previously run directly by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service? “No,” Gerard answered. “There would be steady progress.”

Nearly 40 years later that progress continues. Today more money is spent on tribally operated health care than on Indian Health Service operations. It’s the same at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Steady progress by tribal governments. And a story to add to The Canon.

Mark Trahant is the 20th Atwood Chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is a journalist, speaker and Twitter poet and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. The story of Forrest Gerard is told in the book, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars. He welcomes comments on his Facebook page.